Why You Need To Produce Relevant Content

Today online businesses are competing with you more than ever before. Anyone, anywhere, can create content to flood the Internet and attract the attention of Google and other search engines — and they are.

Since you want to drive qualified traffic to your website you need to make sure that your site ranks high in Google to get found while also being consumed by your audience.

This balance is not easy, but as Google continues to hire thousands of technical engineers and psychologists to understand online searches, your business needs to increase efforts to create compelling, relevant content that gets found and generates clicks.

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User Intent: SEO For Your Audience

Google’s primary goal is to deliver the best content to their users quickly and easily. As competition with Google increases, their business model is moving in the direction that will best suit their bottom line.

As a result, Google is making every effort possible to provide the right information to the right person at the right time with each search query.

Here is a #ProTip for how to make great content that ranks in Google and converts your audience…

Always think about the needs of your customers. Since your customers have needs they want to solve; they need to go somewhere to ask questions and find answers…

...people ask questions when they type something into Google.

Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you went to Google to find information.

Here are some examples of what people type into Google and what they are asking.

As you create content for your website, you should consider the needs of your readers and align your content to solve their problems.

Not only will this approach help you attract more qualified traffic (since you are providing solutions to their needs), you will also increase conversions since people will see that you have terrific products or services.

Discover the most resonant topics

using SEMrush Topic Research

Please specify a valid domain, e.g.,
www.example.com

Authority + Relevance = Good Online Presence

As you develop relevant content for your audience that boosts conversions, you should also consider what is needed for your website to rank higher in Google and get found by more people.

While there are many variables to consider, in a nutshell, there are two main considerations when looking at a website: Authority and Relevance.

Neither of these components is more important than the other because each of them contributes to the success of the other.

Relevance helps you rank in Google for specific search queries, which contributes to your Authority.

Both of these concepts are entirely different and are measured in various ways, but at the end of the day, both of these elements work to contribute to the power that your website has and how well it ranks on Google.

The key is identifying how vital relevant content is for your site because it impacts both the Authority and Relevance of your site.

How To Create Relevant Content Based On Questions & Needs

As we discussed above, whenever someone goes to Google, they have a problem they need to solve. As someone searches for those answers, they ask Google specific questions through search queries.

The ultimate goal of any business owner is to have their content appear at the top of Google for key search queries and convert their readers once they come to the site. This is not easy, but with the right online small business marketing tools and some helpful tips, you will be able to invest your time and energy towards creating great content that gets ranked and boosts conversions!

Let’s say that we have an SEO consulting company and we want to create a blog post about what clients should look for in an SEO Report.

The first thing we should do is go to SEMrush and enter our idea into the Topic Research tool.

Once we enter our information, this tool will provide us with a long list of potential angles that we can take on the specific subject and topic. This saves us a lot of time and helps us build a cohesive strategy around the sizeable SEMrush database.

That is pretty sweet!

For this example let’s choose the angle that most closely resembles our primary need, so let’s take a more in-depth look at results for “What To Look For In SEO Report.”

Once this box is expanded, we see some sections with different information.

Specifically, we can see a collection of source material that we can reference, some relevant questions that people ask about our topic, and related searches that we can use in the content.

Now that we have this tool open let’s take a look at how we can use this information to improve our blog post!

1. Create Headlines That Generate Traffic

Relevant content is not just about the content in the body of our blogs or web pages because for content to be excellent it has to rank in Google, get qualified clicks, and compel readers to take action.

While it is often the most overlooked elements of content, your headline should be considered the most essential part of any content that you produce. This is because it is the first thing that your readers will see in Google SERPs, so if you want customers to consume your content your headline needs to get them to click on the link in the Google results.

If no one clicks on your links, then they can't convert via your website.

One way to build a great headline is to get ideas from the top results of a given search query, and we can find some great ideas in the SEMrush Topic Research tool.

From these results, we can see a wide selection of headlines to work from.

While you should not steal headlines because it will make you look unprofessional and copying headlines will make you blend into existing Google results, you can use existing headlines to get ideas for your unique headlines.

2. Include Questions & Answers In Your Content

Since we want to answer the questions that our target audience is asking while also ranking in Google, we should think about how to include exact questions in our content.

Exact match position is an important part to optimize content for Relevance, and it impacts the Authority of your site. This approach will also show your readers that you know their problems and that they can trust you to give them the best answers and solutions.

From the above results from the SEMrush Topic Research tool, we could include the following questions in both our blog post and even an FAQ for our resource sections:

What should your business expect from an SEO report?

How should SEO reports be delivered to your business?

What are the benefits of an SEO report?

Not only are these questions on the mind of clients based on these results, but these questions also provide a great point to build valuable content that will engage and connect with our readers.

3. Include Related Search Terms

The Google search algorithm is excellent at finding content based on specific search queries, but to make your content an asset to your business you will need to think of ways to expand the utility of each piece of content you produce.

This means increasing the footprint of your online presence with related keywords. Not only does this make your content easier to understand for search engines, but this approach also provides context to your readers as they consume your content.

Our Keyword Magic Tool is a useful application to use in this case, allowing you to find keywords to suit and influence your content.

From the above results, we can quickly begin integrated related keywords that SEMrush believes will help us rank in Google SERPs.

Creating Relevant Content For People & Search Engines

If you have been in business for any amount of time, then you probably know how difficult it can be to create great content that gets found by search engines and drives qualified traffic to your website.

However, by understanding and meeting the requirements of the needs of your customers alongside employing the best content writing practices for SEO you can meet the goals of your business. You can use tools like the SEMrush Topic Research tool to discover ideas to power your content to a new level!

SEMrush Content Platform

Chris is a professional digital marketing consultant with 13 years of experience helping businesses understand and reach their audience in new and interesting ways. He focuses on customer needs balanced with freelance copywriting, PPC, and market analysis.

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Great walkthrough! Our team is diving deeper into creating much more relevant content and SEMRush is hands down the best tool we use. We're able to focus on quality answers/content without having to stress about which topics to cover. Thanks for the great article.

Don't you hate it when you get tricked by a flashy title and clever SEO only to find so-so content? This is a great article because it clearly explains how to use SEO to create relevant content that connects with real people. SEO actually starts with "search" which is the human element. By using search terms to help you figure out what to write, you get the double benefit of creating something that matters to real people first, and that ranks well. Also love your bullet list of benefits of content aligned with the audience. It identifies the metrics you can use to tell if you're hitting home. Thanks for the great post Chris -- I'm off to share it now!

I totally feel this!! More often than not I see a great headline with recycled or mediocre content. Or the reverse - an original and insightful post.. but the headline is average and doesn't give the page its justice. It's when you can make both aspects match up perfectly... you've hit gold

Hey Nicola, thanks for reading the article. Writing headlines is one of the hardest tasks for me... not sure if others experience that too. Appreciate your comment and look forward to finding new ways to write better content for readers- thanks!

Hey Joanne, appreciate the compliment and glad that the article provided info that you can use. Look forward to using SEMrush and other tools to make the discovery and production process easier and more beneficial for content teams!

Pain point analysis when creating new content is a grueling but effective process. If you can answer questions that nobody's answered then you've carved a niche for yourself. My best strategy for this is look on the audience forums and find out what people are asking. It's kind of hard when you have to read between the lines though. But once you've struck gold you've already beat out the competition for creating something unique.

Hey Nicola, love the idea of finding "Content Gaps" in the market. It's like the supply and demand- what are people asking (demand) and what content is out there (supply). If you can find high demand and low supply you can drive qualified traffic to your content.

I have been experimenting with including exact questions in posts to see if that helps rankings. I have seen some cool results- hope the article helps you with the Pain Point Analysis process you referred to!

Would there ever be a "fair" algorythm? As long as it has a machine powering it, people will try to manipulate it. Useless content is cluttering up the internet and people find it more difficult to get to what they want - leaving the door open to "marketing-less search" via AI and speach-enabled devices. We as marketers will have to think long term here, and create content only to inform. Not to market alone, as this will cause the user to go the other way. For all our future's sake, please stop with all the useless content.

Hey Marilize, you make a good point that the algorithms are human-made by a company to serve their own business interests. I think there is a balance between writing informational content for the long-term strategy but also aligning with brand interests. Since it costs a lot of time, money, and resources to craft great content, businesses should figure out what their audience needs then build great content based on the buyer's journey customers are at.

Different types of content can be used at different stages of the buying cycle. Your point about informational content is valid, especially in the "Research" phases, and that content can be improved if it created to meet specific needs of customers. Otherwise, brands run the risk of high investment in content just for the sake of content.

One of the problems I have always found with content is that sometimes its just plain boring. Thing is that content is often required to be on a site - often regulatory by experience, and the business teams don't have the expertise or time or will to make a go of turning that into decent content. Pity as it is all part of the bigger ecosystem of a site. But what I really don't want to see is a shift back to where we have been and that is writing content just to attract visitors and then finding products to sell to that captured audience.

Hey Simon, I totally agree with you that most content out there is garbage and past SEO practices was all about focusing on content for the sake of driving views. SEO used to be all about "gaming the system" and finding ways to get any traffic, and that was bad to our audience.

However, at the same time I think it is vital to think about the needs of our audience then work backwards towards our business products/services through content. The truth is that people have real problems and need to solve real-world issues... brands that offer these solutions should do all they can to drive qualified traffic to their site to solve problems.

I don't think there is anything wrong with creating awesome content based on the needs of people. I think we as marketers can (and should) always do better, and it is really interesting to find ways to discover needs, optimize to get found, and then align our content with what people are searching for to boost sales. Appreciate your insight and agree with you across the board :)

Thanks Chris, this is a useful guide. Authority and relevancy is the most important terms to remember in this world of immense competition. It is really very difficult to create content to serve the people and search engines at the same time. Thanks for your tool of SEMrush topic research. It will make our work easy.

Hey Hemendra, I agree 100%. There is so much content out there it is hard to get found by Google, and our readers have real issues that we can help them solve. The SEMrush Topic Research tool is a great way to find the things people need, and optimize to get found. Good luck with making awesome content for your audience!